Astra H Mk5 door sill water leak fix

Bought this Astra H 55 plate for the mrs earlier this year and so far it's been a good car, a little thirsty but she loves it which gives it the thumbs up from me. So along comes winter and I volunteer to drive home but what's this all the windows have condensation on the inside. Turns out it's been doing this for some time and I knew straight away it must have a water leak. So on the drive home after much cursing and blower on full blast trying to dry the window I remember washing the car and noticing water on the passenger door still. At the time I thought I got too close with the jet wash but opening the door showed this was the problem. Water travelling along the rubber on the door sill and down the gap between the rubber and plastic then under the carpet. Top of the carpet was still dry so that was a relief that the floor matting was not soaked but I needed to fix this asap.


Here it is your typical Astra H door seal water leak:




Quick search online for common water leaks with the Astra H turned up some really good results about this fault with people talking about short speaker wires and sealing the speakers with sealant to cure it. Armed with this info I set about trying the suggested fix. Step one was get the door card off and confirm the speaker seal was leaking.

Door card is held on with Torx screws and push fittings. I removed the cover behind the door release handle using a small screw driver with the tip wrapped in insulation tape. The tape prevented scratching the plastic and beneath this panel is a screw. The grab handle hides two screws, to remove that cover I pushed it up first releasing the top clips then pulled away from the door. Two screws on the bottom of the door card are easily visible and two on the edge (lock side) were removed. Door card is now just clipped in remove starting at the bottom start to pull out to unclip. Once the bottom and sides are unclipped the top remains, which is really tight. At this stage I ended up removing the tweeter pod which just pulls out to release one of the three clips, then twist to unhook any remaining. The top of the door card is clipped in really tight but push up on the plastic re-enforcer only. If in doubt get a torch and have a look, don't just pull the thing up, get your fingers under that black plastic. If it hurts your fingers to the point of crying your doing it right :-)






Once released carefully disconnect the wires going to the door unlock handle light and window switch. Release the door lock cable by unhooking the white plastic cable holder then the metal hook. Now the door card can be put down and might look similar to this. Check out that damp patch.

Great I thought that's defiantly coming from the speaker so the suggested fix sounds right..... brilliant...hang on!



Speaker had silicone sealant already around it so a previous owner or garage had already attempted the fix. But they had tightened the bolts so much it had cracked the speaker mount.

The fixes on-line mentioned the water runs down the speaker wire so I tucked this in and left the door card off for a few days while I decided what to do about the speaker. Over these days it rained really heavy and while in the car I noticed water bouncing out of the speaker hole which would have soaked the back of the speaker. I figured a small amount of water was designed to travel down the inside of the door and out of the drain holes at the bottom. The speaker surround even has a drainage channel built in, but this was too much water. It was coming from the upper right, which was wing mirror territory. Off with the wing mirror, which is held on by three torx bolts, the third is in the right of this pic near the door hinge.

Bingo! a great big gap at the end of the window seal. The Astra h doors are angled, so it would appear water runs down the window, then along the rubber window seal into this corner. I think the wing mirror plastic is then meant to press into this rubber real tight, creating a water barrier and directing it down the outside of the door. You can see a line on the rubber where the wing mirror sits. Now the wing mirror probably gets knocked or the rubber shrinks over the years, but mine was just letting water pour into that door.

So I unclipped the window seal using an old plastic AA Breakdown card to lever it up and cleaned up that edge. I then replaced it trying to close that gap as much as possible, the end hooks allow quite a bit of movement. Top right of this pic are the little hooks, you can hook the window seal on then pull slightly as you refit the seal so more of it ends up covering the gap.

With that done I applied sealant into the gap been careful not to overdue it and get any going on the glass or visible when inside the car. Sealant of choice is 'Everbuild Plumbers Gold' which will dry when wet or damp and survive outside. Used this to cure a water leak on a corsa before and I can't recommend it enough, normal silicone sealant will not last.

Then put some more sealant under where the mirror would sit, leaving enough gap so the sealant was hidden when the wing mirror squashes it down.

Mirror refitted and chose to push it up slightly when tightening the screws so the bottom would stop rubbing on the paint. You can see in the pics the mirror is marking the paint which will eventually rub though and rust which I thought was just a ford focus fault.

That's the real cause fixed and I managed to repair the cracked speaker mount with some solvent cement glue which melted the plastic back together. I sealed around the speaker seal and forced sealant into the speaker screw holes and door card screw hole next to the speaker. When sealing the speaker I made sure to keep that drainage pin clear so any minor water or condensation is still directed back into the door.

Made a point of putting a lower drop in the speaker wire as the picture below shows. The theory is any water that does run down this cable will drip off the lowest point. This should stop any going on the speaker via the connector. Red scotch clothed the sealant area up to get rid of the old sealant and give the new better adhesion.

Finished and in true Haynes manual style 'Refitting is the reverse sequence to removal'. The only pain was the tweeter mount which was done by removing all the plastic clips and then locating them in the mount. Once that's done you can just push it back into position.

So that's the leak well and truly cured but I just did the passenger door as the drivers door does not have this problem. The mirror on the drivers door looks a real tight fit so must be doing it's job but time will tell if I need to do that one also.

If you find the above useful please leave me a comment. It would be great to know if this helped other people fix the issue. I'm not a mechanic just a geek that likes fixing cars and finally documenting what I get up to so go easy on me :-)